The candidates for governor of Massachusetts showed up for a disability issues forum at Watertown's Perkins School for the Blind, but it was the state of the economy that ended up taking center stage.

Jen Thomas, staff writer

The candidates for governor of Massachusetts showed up for a disability issues forum, but it was the state of the economy that ended up taking center stage.

Before the issues affecting residents with disabilities can be addressed, the state needs to find stable financial footing, the five candidates for governor told a standing room only crowd at the Perkins School for the Blind on Tuesday.

“It will be easier for us to create opportunities for those who are disabled once we start to expand our economy and put people back to work,” said Treasurer Tim Cahill, who is running as an independent.

“That’s why I’m here today. That’s why I am running as an independent for this office, because I believe that we need independent ideas, separate from the old party system,” he said.

In the year of the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, programs and services for people with disabilities are being consistently cut as the state looks to close a $9 billion budget deficit.

But Gov. Deval Patrick said that less than 1 percent of the budget for health and human services has been decreased as part of drastic budget reductions across the board.

“We have not done all that you want and all that needs to be done. But we have done everything that we can,” Patrick said. “But let’s be honest with each other on the challenges ahead. Funding human services is going to be a challenge for a couple more years as we climb out of this global recession.”

Eliminating the income and sales taxes would only further jeopardize funding for those valuable programs, Patrick said.

“Doing so would shatter an already fragile safety net,” he said.

People with disabilities make up more than 20 percent of the state’s population, according to the Disability Policy Consortium. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities is double the rate for people without disabilities.

While Grace Ross, a Democrat, said she would push for employee education to encourage the private sector to hire more people with disabilities, Patrick called the state “a model employer.” On Wednesday, Ross admitted she would not have enough signatures to make the ballot.

Republican Charlie Baker advocated a “cleaner, easier, clearer way of doing business” and said streamlining health and human services agencies would not only save money but also make managing these agencies simpler.

“Right now, the state government is cutting programming at the expense of cleaning up its own operation and its own bureaucracy and its own way of doing business and making things harder and more complicated for folks who want to serve people with disabilities. That, for me, is a problem,” said Baker, who served as the state secretary of human services sector for four years.

The format prevented sharp exchanges between the candidates. Each candidate had 25 minutes alone in front of the crowd and moderator Bob Oakes, anchor of WBUR’s Morning Edition.

Almost all the candidates agree on one point – getting the services to the most needy will take the work of an entire community.

“We’re in this together, and we can’t be separated by those who have ‘a need’ and those who ‘have something to offer,’” said Ross, who ran against Patrick in 2006 as a Green-Rainbow Party candidate.

“I don’t see why essential services should be cut for anyone in our state,” she said.

Patrick said the needs of people with disabilities are the same issues that affect everyone in the state – local services, education, transportation.

“The issues of the disabled community are marbled through the whole budget just as they are marbled through our whole community,” he said.

While Cahill emphasized that he would not make promises he wasn’t sure he could keep, Jill Stein of the Green-Rainbow Party said unequivocally that she would not cut any more funding for people with disabilities if she is elected.

“The measure of a society is really in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens,” Stein said. “And I think it’s unconscionable that we are preserving corporate entitlement programs that have not delivered when we’re cutting the needs of our most vulnerable citizens.”

A May 10 poll showed Patrick at 45 percent, Baker at 31 percent, and Cahill at 14 percent. It was Patrick’s best showing since June 2009, the month before Baker entered and Cahill unenrolled, and a 10-point bump from last month.

The Rasmussen Reports poll of 500 likely voters carries an error margin of plus-minus 4.5 percent. Cahill’s slippage, from 23 percent last month, finds him finishing third even in a race with long-shot Ross replacing Patrick.

State House News Service contributed to this report.

This article has been updated about Grace Ross's announcement she will not make the ballot.